Poppa Spook meets Armando Langoustini
by butterfly ghost
Summary: RayV, undercover, haunted by his past.
1. Chapter 1

So one day Fraser took it upon himself to educate the ignorant Yank, and threatened to drag Ray to a performance of Hamlet. "There is more to it than the movie," he assured him. "I think you'll probably enjoy it. It has very good reviews."

Ray had been going to say, "what, you trying to educate the natives now? No way I'm going to see Shakespeare, I'd sooner chew my own bits off," when he suddenly thought that Hamlet was a story about a man avenging his father's death. And he couldn't find it in him to turn his buddy down.

"Yeah," Ray surprised himself by agreeing to it. "Why not?"

He surprised himself even more by loving the play. Beat Mel Gibson hands down. Though he did succeed in annoying every other man jack in the audience. The ghost had just arrived, and declared itself.

"Hamlet, I am thy father's spirit, doomed for a certain time to walk the earth..."

Ray was totally in the moment, mesmerised, skin crawling at the thought of his own father when Fraser, who was providing commentary soto voice for him, declared... "you know, the Dutch translation doesn't work nearly as well. They translate it, 'Omlet, ik ben de popaspook.'"

Poppa Spook.

Ray cracked up. He couldn't help it.

He was but mad north by north west. When the wind was southerly he could tell a hawk from a handsaw. 


	2. Chapter 2

"You'll never see your money again", the old man said, and the worst of it was that he was nearly right.

"He'd have lost you everything, and what, you're still sticking up for this guy? You care if he lives or dies? He'd have had all of you out on the street. You should be damn glad you shot him."

Good old Pa. You could always count on him to say just what he thought.

"What does that make you?" the old bastard had said, before the shooting, before everything fell apart.

What did that make him? A bloody omelette in a Benny joke.

"I know what it doesn't make me. You."

...

And he's there again, like a migraine. Telling him to leave his friend to die. Is that what Ray is, really, down deep in the dirt when you peeled the layers away? The kind of man who'd leave his friend to die in the mud?

"I'm not listening to you any more Pa."

The bastard fought it, he could feel him hanging in there, but he refused to look at him, and in the end the old man had to leave.

And Ray? For days afterwards, weeks, he still expected him to pop out, a malevolent jack in the box. Gradually it eased, and he realised that finally he had exorcised his father's ghost. He even forgot about him.

Until, when he least expected it, Armando Langoustini came knocking on his door, and with him a ghost.

The old man was back

Poppa Spook.


	3. Chapter 3

"Not so tough now, are you big guy?"

The wannabe gangsta tied to the chair has wet himself, and Ray's thinking, how do I get him out of here before somebody kills him? The crew is watching, and the kid is crying, and Ray wants to slap the little thug around.

"Look at this piece of shit garbage here, what you doing, crying for your Mommy?" His father's voice comes out of his mouth, but he's standing over there.

He leans in to the kid's face, and smiles. "Now you remember what we said. You tell the Onofri's they don't do business on our side of town, capiche?"

"Yes, yes sir, yes Mr Langoustini."

That should be it, but it isn't. The cop in him knows all about this blubbering thug, what he is, what he does. And the mob doesn't do mercy.

What would Armando do? It pops into his head like a born again bumper sticker, and Ray laughs, right into the little prick's ear, and the kid's moaning, eyes wide and white like a terrified horse, straining at the ropes. Oh, don't worry Ray, he tells himself. He knows that he'll get the kid out of here with all his limbs intact, but it's not like he's an innocent in all this. It's not like the little bastard doesn't deserve at least a token thumping before they send him on his way.

I'm Ray, he reminds himself, Ray Vecchio. He straightens up, still smiling, cracks his fingers, steps away from the chair.

"Thank you, thank you Mr Langoustini..."

"What, you're gonna let your crew see you turn soft on this scum?"

And Armando swings round kicking, and does the old man proud.


	4. Chapter 4

His FBI contact is a woman, and they meet at least once a week at some swanky restaurant. She's called Amelia Rossetti, and she's as lovely as her name. Heads bent together they talk softly, hidden in plain sight. Sometimes he kisses her, touches her hair. She kisses back, long fingers on his face. The Family thinks that she's his gooma. When they disappear into hotels together his crew chuckle enviously. "The boss got real lucky with her."

Yeah, real lucky. Sitting on hotel beds, thigh by thigh, papers and photos on their laps, they hand over tapes, discuss transcripts, the banal trivia of violence...

Intimacy. Don't touch.

And he knows that she has seen him talking to the air, seen him slapping himself upside the head when the old man just won't stop.

"You suit the moustache, Raimondo," she says, and his heart hurts. He starts to shave the damned thing, wears a false one. At least that way he can feel like it's a mask, something he can take off one day.

And one Friday she drifts her hand across his chest. And the tie comes off, the buttons are undone, and he drowns. And afterwards, after the downwards tumble and the dying fall, they lie heavy in each other's arms. She whispers, "shush, shush," like he's a baby, and strokes the tears from his face.

That's not why he's crying. It's not a sex thing, it never was. He just wishes that he had a compass, one friend, one real friend to keep him sane.

It hurts that she's not Benny.


	5. Chapter 5

There are moments when he almost gets into it. Legs stretched out in the back of the limo, with his elbow on the gangster lean. But the old man travels with him, enjoying this too much, and Ray will not be that man.

His name becomes his rosary. Some nights he drinks to remember, and he prays he won't forget.

Ray. Ray Vecchio.

They still meet in the restaurants and hotels, but they never talk about it, never touch that way again. She still smiles at him, but there's something behind her eyes now. She seems to be afraid.

And at this one hotel, this one meeting, a knock comes to the door. "Room service."

Benny. After a full year there he stands, in all his bright red dignity, grinning that indomitable grin.

"Ray," his friend says, "Ray Vecchio."


	6. Chapter 6

"You still talk to yourself?" He's watching Benny, conversing with the air. Maybe Fraser has an old man too. He'd said something once...

And they sat a spell together, and Fraser was himself. Very polite, always polite. The concerned visitor.

And then he left.

If it had been a woman he could have understood. For the right woman, for the wrong woman, a man will do anything. He knows that. Benny knows that. A woman he could have accepted.

But this?

Fraser has gone now, into his ice and snow, and Ray can't follow him, can't let him go. "Not that I care," he says, still caring.

He cares too much.

And all the while the old man sneers, twisting the fact of it into his gut. "I told you he would go."


	7. Chapter 7

He figures that he must have been running, trying to flee the scene of a crime. Florida was a mistake, and things don't work out with Stella. It doesn't surprise him. There weren't even any tears between them at the end. They shook hands at the airport, she turned her cheek for a chaste kiss, and that was it. Pa got between him and everything.

So stop being such a baby, he says to himself. Build yourself a life. And he starts from scratch. Private detective Ray Vecchio. He likes the sound of that, makes a go of it. After a few months he thinks, "what the hell," and finally phones Benny. "Yeah, I'm back in Chicago... yeah, private dick now, working for myself." He laughs down the phone, the ghost of Armando joking, "I'm a made guy."

And Benny is talking back, a smile in his voice, talking about how best to build an igloo, and emergency dining out on the ice. "You know Ray, you should never eat a polar bear's liver, there's too much vitamin A... you could get hypervitaminosis."

"Yeah, I'll remember that next time I'm making Fegato alla Venezia," and he's grinning from ear to ear.

"You know," Benny says, "it's nearly our anniversary."

"Anniversary?" What's the big red guy talking about now? "What anniversary? You want me to send you flowers?"

"No, no, Ray... I just meant, it's been a few years since your first camping trip."

"Oh yeah..." Ray smiles, touched that Benny would remember.

"If I recall correctly you suggested we make it an annual event."

"Yeah... yeah I did, didn't I?"

"So, if you like this time we could actually bring a tent."

"And a map." Nah, he thinks, Benny's just being nice. But then he thinks, Fraser doesn't lie, it's not in him. "Yeah," he surprises himself by agreeing, "yeah, why not?"

And so here they are in late summer, trekking through the woods, the faithful old wolf bounding ahead, singing nonsense as they go. "I can't get offa my horse, cause some dirty dawg put glue in my saddle..."

And the wind is southerly, and Ray can tell a hawk from a handsaw.


End file.
